They beat Dallas Keuchel. These young, irrepressible Yankees beat a pitcher who hadn't surrendered a single run to them over 14 2/3 postseason innings.

They beat a pitcher who entered the game with the best all-time career ERA (1.09) against any opponent in the history of baseball, minimum of 50 innings.

Yeah, Keuchel had owned New York. He owned it the way Joe Namath owned New York, the way Derek Jeter did, only not in a good way.

The young guys, the Baby Bombers, took turns getting big hits Wednesday night as the Yankees beat Keuchel and his Houston Astros 5-0 to take a 3-2 ALCS lead and push one win away from their first World Series since 2009.

As remarkable as it was to see Keuchel chased after 4 2/3 innings, to see he was human after all, that if you cut him, yes, he bleeds, it still wasn't as remarkable as what Yankees pitchers have done to Astros' bats.

Against the Yankees, they have scored nine runs in five games, and on this night, they didn't score any.

Against the Red Sox, they fell out of bed with a 3-0 lead.

Against the Yankees, they sleep with horrible dreams of Masahiro Tanaka, Luis Severino, CC Sabathia, Sonny Gray and that bullpen.

"It's rare because of how much offense we put up through six months and the Division Series," Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. "To this day, I believe we're one good game from coming out of it."

They better be. And they better get another masterpiece out of Justin Verlander in Game 6, or this thing is over.

Tanaka outpitched one of great artisans in baseball. Seven innings. Three hits. No runs. One walk. Eight strikeouts. Tanaka was brilliant.

"Our starting pitching has been phenomenal and, obviously, he has been basically unhittable," DH Chase Headley said after he went 3-for-4.

"Tanaka was special," manager Joe Girardi said. "Look at his three postseason starts. I think he understands that he has to [raise his game]. He's raised it as high as I've seen."

For baseball fans in Connecticut, holding a watchful October eye from the Munson-Nixon Line, it is nearly impossible to believe these are the same Astros of 10 days ago. They battered Red Sox starters Chris Sale, Drew Pomeranz, Doug Fister and Rick Porcello for 16 runs in 111/3 innings. That's a 12.71 October ERA that has to make Red Sox fans sick.

Remember the ALDS Astros? They scored 24 runs in four games. They were the 1927 Yankees. Jose Altuve couldn't stop broadcasters from shouting, "MVP!" He hit .533 and had a cartoonish OPS of 1.765.

Yuli Gurriel hit .529. George Springer hit .412. Carlos Correa homered twice and drove in six runs. Up and down the lineup, the Astros were heralded as a complete hitting team. After all, they did lead the majors in runs scored.

They hit .333 against the Red Sox, with a .402 on-base percentage and .974 OPS. They were nine Mike Trouts.

And then Mr. Tanaka showed up with young Severino and ageless CC. Everything changed. The Astros are hitting a feeble .147 in the ALCS.

Leadoff man Springer is 2-for-18 with two singles and five strikeouts. Josh Reddick is 0-for-17. Alex Bregman is 2-for-17. Marwin Gonzalez is 2-for-15. They've combined for 14 strikeouts. On top of that, Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann are a combined 1-for-21 with eight strikeouts.

Altuve and Correa are the only guys hitting, and even they paled compared to Aaron Judge and the Yankees bats in the past three games.

Springer did have a bloop single to center off Tanaka in the third. Yet here he was in a vital one-out situation in the fifth, after a line single to right by Gonzalez and a walk to McCann, looking at 95 mph strike three fastball.

And here was Reddick, who had hit .375 against the Red Sox, looking so anemic in striking out on a Tanaka splitter to end that fifth inning threat.

Gurriel was the only Astro to get to third base. He lined a leadoff double down the left field line in the second only to see Bregman bounce to first base, Beltran ground out against a drawn-in infield and Gonzales bounce out to Tanaka.

Tanaka seemed to get nastier as the game wore on. Six of his eight strikeouts came in his final three innings. He made Beltran and Gonzalez look silly in the seventh. Beltran couldn't hold up on a pitch that bounced in front of the plate. On his 103rd and final pitch, Tanaka got Gonzalez to wave at an 89 mph splitter.

He became only the third Yankees pitcher to throw seven or more scoreless innings in at least two postseason starts. Roger Clemens did it in 2002, Whitey Ford in 1960. Tanaka's 0.90 ERA also is the second lowest ever for a Yankee (minimum 19 innings) behind Waite Hoyt's 0.00 ERA over 27 innings in 1921.

"I'm just keeping it really simple," Tanaka said. "You go out there, and you fight, and you empty the tank. I'm just really clear of what I need to do out there."

Tommy Kahnle threw a perfect eighth and pitched around a Correa double in the ninth. Yankees pitching retired 14 of the final 15 Astro hitters. In Boston during the ALDS, that would have qualified as an entry in "Ripley's Believe It Or Not!" The 49,647 raucous Yankee Stadium fans believed it. They were here.

"Coming in, their bullpen was much more heralded than their starting rotation," Hinch said. "Their starters have really stepped up against us and made good pitches. We've lost a little bit of our offensive mojo. Some of that is the anxiety that gets created around at-bats. Some of that is them executing pitches.

"Tanaka changed his game plan, threw a few more splits today, some finish fastballs, which are rare for him. The playoffs are about advanced scouting and exposing weaknesses. If they get you to crack a little bit outside your game plan, then they've got you. We haven't stayed in our game plan quite well enough. Getting pull happy against Tanaka hurt us."

Only 10 days after the Astros couldn't stop scoring runs, it's amazing to hear Hinch talk this way. Yes, it's even more amazing than the Yankees beating Dallas Keuchel.